In early September, Catawiki is offering an unsigned Ecce Homo on panel as “Circle of Carlo Dolci,” with an estimated value of €1,600–2,000. The visible quality is striking, but something else is more interesting: the panel support, draughtsmanship, golden rays of the halo and facial type align remarkably well with the Spanish-Valencian tradition of devotional painting in the late sixteenth century.
When a painting may have been miscatalogued, the most interesting shift is not always from “circle of” to “by,” but from one art-historical world to another. That appears to be a serious possibility with this Ecce Homo.
Catawiki presents the approximately 55 × 48 cm panel as a seventeenth-century Florentine work from the circle of Carlo Dolci, even assigning it the date 1680 in the catalogue details. At the time of writing, bidding had reached €765; the reserve had not yet been met, and Catawiki listed an estimated value of €1,600–2,000.[1] On paper, it is a modest Old Master lot.
The quality is in the face
Christ appears against an almost black background, bare-chested beneath a red mantle. His head is slightly inclined, yet his eyes engage the viewer directly. The crown of thorns is substantial and almost sculptural in its construction; around it is not a soft halo of light but a fan of dozens of extremely fine golden rays.
The precision becomes particularly apparent at close range. The eyelids, corners of the eyes and pupils are constructed with a fine, almost draughtsman-like control. Tiny highlights give the eyes their vitality. The nose is modelled with a relatively sharp contour and restrained tonal modulation. Moustache and beard are made up of individually legible hairs laid over the underlying flesh tones. The mouth is small, red and sharply defined.
The red mantle is handled more broadly and simply. It lacks some of the meticulous finish found in the face. That difference need not indicate a lack of quality; the concentration of labour-intensive detail in the face is entirely appropriate for a devotional image intended to be viewed at close quarters. And this is where the problem with Carlo Dolci begins.
Why Dolci is not the obvious comparison
Carlo Dolci treated the subject of the Ecce Homo repeatedly. One version at Christie’s measures 51.4 × 39.7 cm and is dated to the early 1640s. It and closely related autograph versions are painted on canvas.[2] Another, larger Ecce Homo by Dolci was characterised by its meticulous detail, luminous, almost enamel-like surface and the silky smooth handling of the mantle.[3]
That is not quite the kind of painting we see here. The Catawiki panel is certainly precise, but it is “drier.” The underlying structure of the face remains visible: the contours of the eyes, eyebrows, bridge of the nose and individual hairs. The gold rays of the halo stand out sharply against the black ground. The red drapery lacks the sensuously smooth, saturated finish one expects from Dolci.
None of this proves that the work cannot be a seventeenth-century Florentine production by a follower. “Circle of Carlo Dolci” is, after all, a much broader designation than an autograph attribution. But comparison with documented works by Dolci explains the panel less convincingly than the current catalogue entry would suggest.
Flemish or Netherlandish?
Our first reaction, in fact, was not Spanish but rather Flemish or Netherlandish. That impression stems principally from the way the face is constructed. The relatively sharp contours, individually articulated beard hairs, direct gaze, dark background and almost tactile attention to the eyes, mouth and crown of thorns recall the Northern European tradition of devotional imagery. In such works, Christ is not placed within an elaborate narrative scene but presented to the viewer almost as a portrait.
Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, numerous bust-length images of the suffering Christ circulated in the Low Countries, building on types associated with Dieric Bouts and his followers. In 2019, for example, Sotheby’s offered an Ecce Homo as North Netherlandish School, 16th Century, referring to the broader tradition of Bouts, Quinten Massijs, Jan Mostaert and Hans Memling.[4] It is not a direct compositional comparison with the Catawiki panel, but it helps explain why the linear detailing and concentrated frontality initially appear so Northern.
Juan de Juanes comes surprisingly close
A considerably more fruitful comparison, however, is found in the Museo del Prado. Around 1570, Juan de Juanes painted an Ecce Homo on panel measuring 83 × 62 cm. It is one of his most widely repeated direct and frontal presentations of Christ crowned with thorns.[5] It is emphatically not the same composition. In the Prado panel, Christ’s bound hands and the reed sceptre are also visible, whereas the Catawiki painting is cropped more tightly around the chest and face.
Yet the visual vocabulary is remarkably close: the dark background; the slightly inclined head looking directly out at the viewer; pale flesh set against reddish drapery; meticulous execution; and, above all, the radiating halo. Juanes’s iconographic models were subsequently copied and adapted by later painters, both technically and stylistically.
The more interesting hypothesis, therefore, is that the panel belongs to the Valencian or broader Hispano-Flemish tradition in which such Juanes-like devotional images were produced and repeated during the second half of the sixteenth century and around 1600.
And then there is Luis de Morales
Luis de Morales likewise makes clear why a Spanish context deserves serious consideration. His Ecce Homo of around 1560–1570 in the Prado is also painted on panel and measures 73 × 50.5 cm.[6] The painting offered here is not typical of Morales. The face is fuller and calmer, lacking the almost emaciated intensity of his best-known devotional images. Yet the comparison shows that precisely those elements that stand out in the Catawiki panel sit entirely naturally within sixteenth-century Spanish painting.
That, in turn, gives the initial Flemish impression greater significance. Sixteenth-century Spanish painting was in close and sustained contact with the Flemish tradition. Features that initially appear Northern European therefore need not contradict a Spanish origin. On the contrary, Hispano-Flemish may explain a painting like this better than a simple choice between Netherlandish and Spanish.
A strong market comparison
On 12 February 2025, Artcurial in Paris sold an Ecce Homo catalogued as École hispano-flamande vers 1600, d’après Juan de Juanes. Painted in oil on oak panel, it measured 57 × 42.5 cm and was presented as a repetition of Juanes’s Prado composition. Estimated at €3,000–4,000, it realised approximately €6,000.[7] A revised attribution does not in itself guarantee a leap in value. With anonymous Old Masters, the persuasiveness of the dating, school, quality and technical evidence matters far more than simply replacing one famous name with another.
Not Juan de Juanes, but perhaps the wrong century
The most tempting mistake at this point would be to turn a doubtful “Circle of Carlo Dolci” immediately into “Circle of Juan de Juanes.” The composition is not identical to the well-known Juanes version. We have no further technical information available, and a seventeenth-century painter could perfectly well have deliberately revived an older devotional type.
Yet the existing attribution is no more convincing. The combination of a panel support, linear construction of the face, handling of the hair and eyes, near-black background and delicate golden rays of the halo sits remarkably naturally within Spanish devotional painting of the second half of the sixteenth century. The comparisons with Juan de Juanes and, at somewhat greater remove, Luis de Morales explain the painting as a whole more successfully than the known Ecce Homo group associated with Carlo Dolci.
That is also why this lot deserves attention. Not because a €1,600 painting must suddenly prove to be a five- or six-figure discovery, but because the art-historical context in which it is currently being offered may simply be the wrong one. This makes the Ecce Homo above all a connoisseurship lot: a painting for which, at least for now, the most interesting question is not who painted it, but where and when.
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Do you follow this artist, or have you come across a work you would like to know more about? We regularly research works appearing on the market and are always happy to exchange views on quality, provenance, art-historical context and previous auction results. You can contact us directly via info@antonello.art.
Notes and sources
[1] Catawiki, lot 105746639, “Carlo Dolci (1616–1686), Circle of – Ecce Homo,” accessed 1 September 2026.
[2] Christie’s, London, Carlo Dolci, Ecce Homo, oil on canvas, 51.4 × 39.7 cm.
[3] Christie’s, Old Masters Evening Sale, Carlo Dolci, Ecce Homo, oil on canvas, 93.3 × 77.5 cm.
[4] Sotheby’s, Old Masters Online, New York, 21 January–5 February 2019, lot 1003, North Netherlandish School, 16th Century, Ecce Homo, oil on panel, 35.9 × 22.9 cm; estimate $15,000–20,000.
[5] Museo Nacional del Prado, Juan de Juanes, Ecce Homo, c. 1570, oil on pine panel, 83 × 62 cm, inv. P000848.
[6] Museo Nacional del Prado, Luis de Morales, Ecce Homo, 1560–1570, oil on panel, 73 × 50.5 cm, inv. P000941.
[7] Artcurial, Maîtres anciens et du XIXe siècle, Paris, 12 February 2025, lot 356, École hispano-flamande vers 1600, d’après Juan de Juanes, Ecce Homo, oil on oak panel, 57 × 42.5 cm; estimate €3,000–4,000; result approximately €6,000.
